Research Navigator: Home Sweet Home: State and National Household-Level Data for People with Vision Loss

Published January 30, 2017

This brief Research Navigator provides an overview of our new 2015
Data Workbook, including:

tips about the reliability and usefulness of the Workbook's data,
and

highlights from this initial workbook release, which is focused on
households and living situations for people with vision loss.

About This Series

Welcome to the ninth edition of AFB's Research Navigator. This is a
quarterly series - accompanying AFB's DirectConnect newsletter -
from the AFB Public Policy Center. The purpose of this series is to keep
you informed of user-friendly facts and figures and the latest research
pertaining to people with vision loss. The series will also include the
necessary background information so you may use the information most
accurately. Have an idea for a Research Navigator topic? Want to
know more about a particular statistic or line of research? Send your
thoughts to AFB's Senior Policy Researcher, Rebecca Sheffield. Readers are also
encouraged to check out AFB's Statistical Snapshots. This webpage is regularly updated with a wide variety of information and
tools that address commonly asked questions about people with vision loss.

A Sweet Treat

Just in time for Valentine's Day, the AFB research team has been working
hard on a gift for you! Using the link below, you can download our 2015
Data Workbook, an Excel file full of spreadsheets with national and state
level data about vision loss from the American Community Survey (ACS),
including 2015 data and five-year data, 2011-2015. The 2011-2015 data files
were just released by the Census Bureau, so this is very "fresh" data!

How to use the Workbook

Opening the 2015 Data Workbook, you will find a tab explaining the data
sources and how to cite the workbook, followed by tabs for every state in
the United States, as well as Puerto Rico. The
American Community Survey
is one of the most comprehensive national surveys, and data can actually be
broken down for much smaller geographic levels - such as ZipCodes and
Census tracts. However, for small populations (such as people with vision
loss), focusing at the state level helps to reduce statistical error (the chance that the people who were surveyed
were not representative of the overall population). The more people
included in a survey sample, the more accurate the survey will be in
estimating characteristics of the total population.

Most of the data in the Workbook is based on a five-year dataset (meaning
the estimates are based on data from five consecutive years of the ACS),
which helps expand the sample and reduce statistical error. Yet, readers
should be a little more cautious about estimates in smaller states, and we
can feel a little more confident about estimates in larger states.
Similarly, when looking at estimates that break down the small category of
people with vision loss into even smaller categories (such as people with
vision loss, between the ages of 0 and 2, living in New Hampshire!), then
we should be even more concerned about the amount of statistical error in
the estimates.

The 2015 Data Workbook currently does not contain confidence intervals
(which are mathematically derived to provide information to help judge the
usefulness of data; for example "we are 95% confident that the actual value
is between X% and Y%"). AFB is working with the Census Bureau and hopes to
update the Workbook with this information soon.

States and State-Level Data

On the national ("USA") tab in the Workbook, you will find a single table
listing population data for each state. This is the Census Bureau's most
current (2015) data. Remaining tabs in the workbook contain a variety of
data about people with vision loss in each state (based on the 5-year data
files).

When considering the distribution of people with visual impairments among
the states of the United States, ranking the total numbers of people with
vision loss in each state can be misleading - it is not very helpful to
know that California and Texas have the most people with visual impairments
(2015 ACS estimates are 800,000 and 701,000, respectively). Of course these
states have the largest populations of people with vision loss; they have
the largest populations among all the states of the United States,
regardless of disability!

Prevalence rates (percentages) are more helpful for demonstrating the
variation in vision loss from state to state. Comparing states by the rate
of vision loss estimated (for all ages) by the 2015 American Community
Survey, the three states with the highest proportions of residents with
vision loss are West Virginia (3.9% +/- 0.2%), Nevada (3.8% +/- 0.2%), and
Arkansas (3.4% +/- 0.2%), while the three states with the lowest rates are
Minnesota (1.5% +/- 0.1%), Hawaii (1.6% +/- 0.2%), and Wisconsin (1.8% +/-
0.1%). Also of note, Puerto Rico's rate of visual impairment is 6.0% +/-
0.2%, higher than any U.S. State. (Confidence intervals from
the Census Bureau's American Fact Finder). Geographically speaking, the highest rates of visual impairment tend to
be among states in the southern, central regions of the U.S., with lower
rates in the Midwest and on the coasts.

Demographics

We have reported on demographic information in
previous editions of the Research Navigator. Now the 2015 Data Workbook gives you easy access to much more state-level
data than could be included in the typical Navigator format. The
Workbook includes national and state level breakdowns for commonly used age
categories and for sex (male/female) for both adults and children. We have
also provided tables with classifications for nine race categories used by
the Census Bureau.

Where do people with visual impairments live?

Since the focus of this first release of the Data Workbook is on housing
(the American Community Survey collects a host of household-level data), we
have pulled national and state-level data for a variety of housing-related
variables. Most of these variables are based on survey questions that are
asked for the entire household (rather than other demographic questions
which may be unique to each person in the household). As with most American
Community Survey data, we must acknowledge that the findings typically do
not include data from people living in group quarters (like dorms or
assisted living facilities) and never includes data for people living in
"institutional group quarters" (such as prisons, military barracks, and
nursing homes).

Multi-generational Households

The Census Bureau asks (in the American Community Survey) whether a
household is multigenerational, meaning that there are two or more adult
generations living in the same household or that both grandparents and
grandchildren live in the same household. In the national data, it is
interesting that people with vision loss are slightly more likely to live
in multigenerational households. This trend is similar for both adults and
children. State-level breakdowns show that differences vary quite a bit
from state to state.
Read more from VisionAware about grandparenting with vision
loss.

Relocation

Although in the field of blindness and visual impairments, "mobility"
usually means the ability to get up and go, to the Census Bureau,
"mobility" refers to people who relocate and move from place to place.
Looking at the 2015 Data Workbook, we see that the national rates of
mobility are fairly similar for people with and without vision difficulty
(about 85% of people are "nonmovers," who do not relocate within a given
year). Children with vision loss have more than a 2% greater rate of
mobility than children without vision loss. The Census Bureau also tracks
differences in those relocating from other locations inside the United
States/Puerto Rico, versus those relocating from outside the U.S. While
there are not strong differences at a national level, you may find useful
information at the state level.

Limited English Households

The ACS asks households whether anyone in the household aged 14 or older
speaks English only or speaks English "very well." If no one in the
household meets that criteria, then the household is considered a "Limited
English Household." Nationally, less than 5% of households are Limited
English Households. People with vision loss appear more likely to live in
Limited English Households. Look at the state-level data to see how this
trend varies across the United States. AFB's
FamilyConnect provides many of its web resources in both English and Spanish to support
the growing proportion of Spanish-speaking families.

Receipt of Food Stamps/SNAP

One way to study the financial situations of people with vision loss is to
look at their household's participation in nutrition assistance programs.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a federal program
whose funding is administered through state agencies under a variety of
program names, often referred to as food stamps. The ACS asks
households if they have received such benefits at any time in the prior 12
months. People with vision difficulty are much more likely to live in
households that receive this type of nutrition assistance (for children,
42% of children with vision loss vs. 26% of children without vision loss;
for adults, 26% of adults with vision loss vs. 13% of adults without vision
loss). The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service
provides
information about eligibility criteria for SNAP benefits. In general, net household income must be at or below the federal poverty
level in order to qualify for SNAP; however, policies in are in place to
reduce income and asset limitations if at least one person in the household
is over age 60 or has a disability.

The future of the Data Workbook

Whether you are writing a grant or report or are just looking to better
understand the characteristics of people with vision loss in your state, we
hope you find this first release of the Data Workbook helpful! The AFB
research team plans to continue to update this file, both to keep the data
current and to add new types of data. We will be adding data from the
National Health Interview Survey (which AFB uses for our national
population estimate of people with vision loss), and we will look at other
data sources, including data from the Department of Education. What would
you be interested in accessing? Let us know! Email Rebecca Sheffield (rsheffield@afb.net)

Please subscribe to the DirectConnect Newsletter to stay informed about updates to the Data Workbook (as well as to receive the quarterly Navigator and other important updates from the AFB Policy Center). To subscribe, go to http://www.afb.org/myafb.aspx and login in (if you have logged in before) or follow the link to "become a member" to create a newsletter account. Once you have an account and are logged in, follow the link to "Newsletters," check the box next to AFB DirectConnect, and click submit!

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The mission of the American Foundation for the Blind is to create a world of no limits for people who are blind or visually impaired. We mobilize leaders, advance understanding, and champion impactful policies and practices using research and data.